Histories of Art, Race and Empire: 1492-1865

Rationale

One of the units that I teach is called Places, History, and Government. At the fourth to sixth grade level, students begin learning about the history of the Long Walk of the Navajo people. This curriculum unit will be for the sixth graders. The objective of the unit is for students to analyze how the historical event of The Treaty of 1868 affected the Diné/Navajo. Students will be using reading strategies where they will analyze in detail how a key individual event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and developed in a text and analyze relationships among the key individuals, events, or ideas. They will also be using the social studies standards to describe, explain and evaluate the causes and effects of an historical event.

Sixth grade students will learn about what lead up to The Treaty of 1868, what happened during the event, what happened after the event and the effects of it today. When I am teaching this unit, it comes at a time when you can see these young children transitioning into teenagers. This unit grounds some of them into being humble and instills in them pride of being a Navajo. They begin to explore more on their own and ask their family members about this event. It is a very important traumatic historical event that happened to their People and they need to realize that this event has affected their present and future. This event is not recognized in Arizona standards for History or Social Studies content and I have not seen it in any textbook. The curriculum in Beyond Textbook has a social studies Arizona State standard that states:, this authorizes me to explain in my classroom the cause and effects of interactions between cultures and civilizations of Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia, China, Major World Religions, African Kingdoms, Middle Ages and India.¹ It does not mention surrounding Native Americans.

In the Navajo culture, it used to be and still is a taboo to have your picture taken or drawn because it was believed that it captured your soul and it would be trapped. There have been oral Navajo stories passing on these beliefs, but they are not documented in published texts. In the article, “Taken Pictures: On Interpreting Native American Photographs of Northwest Coast,” author Carolyn J. Marr states, the Native Americans were wary of having their photographs taken in the late 19^th to 20^th century. They claimed that the camera could steal a person’s soul and that photography was disrespectful to the spiritual world.² However some Indigenous people agreed to letting themselves be photographed for future purposes, to document their appearance so their descendants would have a record of Navajo culture in hard times.

Looking at these photographs, with information like this in mind so, can definitely help today’s students to wonder about what the thoughts were of the ancestors, what they may have felt, and thus to build that sense of empathy for how things were. The Navajo People had the freedom to wander where they wanted, to have their livestock graze where there were plants and to be able to hunt where they wanted. After the ‘Long Walk,’ the Navajo People had to rebuild, had to learn to begin using U.S. economics and learning to stay in set boundaries of a land. Historical awareness of this event will aid in understanding of why things are the way they are today. The Navajo People have a document now that states where boundaries are, how much land they are only to occupy and how much livestock they may have. The use of photography in this curriculum will help the learners to have that visual of what our Navajo People went through and how colonialism shaped their destiny.   

In the 1960’s, during the Civil Rights Movement the Navajos were given permission to write, produce and create texts that would allow them to tell their own history. ³ However, they tended to accept the colonial approach of earlier historians and wrote narratives that incorporated it. The history of the Navajo people and their stories had to rely back on documents recovered by land claim researchers and anthropology reports.⁴ Stories about our people, however, are not found in such sources. Rather, oral stories are passed down from generation to generation, a process that demands the use of our imaginations. In modern times now, we use colonial media, including different types of art, for our own purposes: to convey what we believe our ancestors saw. On this course unit, after some introductions, research and evaluating photographs of the Long Walk and the Treaty of 1868, students will create their own interpretations, using a range of materials and media.

A majority of our learners are visual learners. When they are shown step by step processes on how to create traditional art pieces, parents or grandparents use hands on learning approach. The traditional art practices are taught generation to generation. The beautiful objects made using traditional methods were not considered to be “art” in the sense that the word was used in European cultures. Every piece of what is now considered as art was used in everyday living. As part of the teaching process, family members passed down historical stories of why that piece was made. Today some of these traditional pieces are now displayed in museum settings, and have become something to only look at and not use. Much is lost when objects are placed in a glass case.

My students and I will take a deeper look at images of that Navajo time era and analyze the meanings. The students will make inferences and convey the meaning of the portraits. At the end of the curriculum unit, students will be able to take a closer look at Navajo Arts and Crafts and be able to understand why it was created and have value for it. Discovering the history, interviewing and asking questions will create a dialogue that is sometimes missing in learning about one’s culture.